Senators look to feds to speed up hurricane relief

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, April 29, 2010

Citing more than $3 billion in unspent federal hurricane relief funds — some of it allocated as far fack as Rita in 2005 — state legislators Wednesday offered up plenty of criticism but few ideas for speeding up the process to get it into the hands of desperate residents.

“It's very hard when you've got someone who's desperately poor, begging for help, and you can't deliver it to them because they failed to save their receipts,” said Michael Gerber, executive director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

Some people living in poor conditions have died before getting relief, he told legislators at a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

Some $3 billion unspent

To date, $1.7 billion in federal relief money allocated to Texas for hurricanes Ike and Dolly remains stalled. Another $1.3 billion has been earmarked for projects, but still is unspent.

“Really, what we're talking about here is another instance where Texas is getting their wings clipped by the Obama administration,” said state Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands. “Just like the Johnson Space Center, this deal, everything — you know, we're getting our ears pinned back.”

Colleagues, however, said the state shares responsibility.

State Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, suggested it would be a good idea to “stay away from presidential politics.” He pointed to communication between the state and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that suggested each is pointing fingers and concluded that the truth is “somewhere in between.”

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, suggested state agencies work to improve communication and look at other steps they can take to expedite funding.

HUD has rebuffed state plans for allocating $1.7 billion in federal grants for housing and public works under federal Community Development Block Grants, saying too much money was allocated to inland counties that did not suffer as much damage while too little was slated for Galveston and Orange counties.

Texas is trying again under new plan that would allocate more money to Houston, Galveston and Southeast Texas.

Another $1.3 billion previously allocated is mostly unspent, though state officials said much of it has been approved for projects. The state must meet federal eligibility rules, which officials said is a time-consuming process, before spending it.

A total of $74.5 million in such grants allocated for Hurricane Rita has been spent; another $428 million sent for communities affected by hurricanes Rita and Katrina is 64 percent spent. Both hurricanes hit in 2005, but officials said the second pot of money did not arrive until 2007.

Lag time put at six years

Williams expressed concern that it is expected to take until 2011 to spend relief funds stemming from a 2005 hurricane.

“What are these people supposed to do in the meantime?” he asked. “It's almost like they (federal officials) don't really want to disperse the money.”

Asked afterward about why he thinks the federal government would want to hold on to money, he said, “I sort of suspect that the federal deficit being as extraordinary as it is, if there is a way not to actually spend the money, that at least from a federal perspective may not be so bad. But whether that's accurate or not, I have no idea.”

Ogden said there is “probably room for improvement everywhere,” but fixing the problem would take federal action.

Change ‘very difficult'

Some said a federal disaster contingency fund that would get money out quickly to communities is needed.

Former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, chairman of the Governor's Commission for Disaster Recovery and Renewal, made suggestions including giving broad authority to the governor to distribute funds, particularly those that have a significant environmental impact or cross several regions, and that the state develop its own damage estimate model that would be approved by the federal government.

“It's obvious that there need to be some changes, but most people are kind of resigned to the fact that it's so cumbersome and so complicated and so political that change is going to be very difficult,” Ogden said. “It is easy to ridicule a program that's supposed to help people recover from a disaster but nothing happens for two to five years. That's an easy program to ridicule. And that's what we've got right now.”